Farm Workers Call on Trader Joe’s to Join Fair Food Program
Ja-Rei Wang, a fellow in the AFL-CIO Public Affairs Department, sends us this report about a protest at Trader Joe’s in Washington, D.C.
Several dozen students, activists, farm workers, musicians and community members came together yesterday outside of the Trader Joe’s in downtown Washington, D.C., to demand the supermarket chain stop supporting exploitation of farm workers and, instead, help build a food system that respects workers’ rights. The protest was one of the first such actions across the Northeast.
Chanting to the beat of live san jarocho music and marching with tomato-shaped posters, protestors called on Trader Joe’s to join the other companies that have signed onto the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food program, which calls for a penny-per-pound premium on tomatoes, fairer wages and a strict code of conduct for better working conditions.
The protestors delivered a letter to store management urging them to join the effort to provide a better life for the workers who supply their tomatoes.
Training is Sign of Better Day in Tomato Fields
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“It’s like a time machine has suddenly whisked us from a Charles Dickens workhouse to an auto plant in the 21st century. The difference in attitude is that great.” That’s how one tomato worker, a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), reacted to a new training session for employees of Pacific Tomato Growers.
In the training, the first-ever of its kind, workers who pick tomatoes learned they are entitled to a minimum wage and breaks, what constitutes a full bucket of tomatoes and what to do if they have a complaint.
Tomato Workers, Growers Sign Historic Agreement
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After more than 15 years of struggle, justice may be just around the corner in the Florida tomato fields. In what workers call a “watershed moment,” the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) yesterday signed an agreement that will extend the CIW’s Fair Food principles to more than 90 percent of the Florida tomato industry.
The agreement includes a strict code of conduct, a cooperative complaint resolution system, a health and safety program, a worker-to-worker education process and the penny more a pound for tomatoes picked that workers have long sought.
The agreement will take effect in two stages. This growing season (2010-2011), all participating FTGE members will pay the penny more per pound. At the same time, CIW and two growers, Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers will hammer out a process for enforcing the code of conduct throughout the industry. The code will apply only to Six L’s and Pacific this season. It goes into full effect in the 2011-2012 season.
Tomato Workers’ Struggle for Justice Moves to Supermarket Aisles
The fight for justice for tomato pickers is headed to grocery store aisles across the country now that the top three food service companies and the four largest fast-food companies have signed agreements to improve wages and working conditions in the Florida tomato fields.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is gearing up to expand its Campaign for Fair Food to the Publix, Ahold, Kroger and Trader Joe’s supermarket chains, which together have tremendous market power in the produce industry. So far, only the Whole Foods supermarket chain has signed an agreement with the CIW.
The workers are demanding safer, more humane working conditions and a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. Florida tomato pickers earn 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes, a rate that has not changed for three decades.
Impoverished Farm Workers Respond to Need in Haiti
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Union members and other working people across the country are digging deep into their hearts and pockets to provide aid to the victims of the massive earthquake in Haiti. You can take action now to help the Haitian survivors by clicking on the AFL-CIO Haitian Disaster Relief site here.
One of this country’s most impoverished areas—the farm worker community of Immokalee, Fla.—is doing its part. Enlisting its low-power radio station, Radio Conciencia, members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) launched a donation drive. They will send all donations to the Red Cross.
The CIW website says the response has been overwhelming.
Seeing farm workers—who are themselves suffering unemployment and economic crisis due to two weeks of freezing temperatures that destroyed crops across south Florida—stream into the office with water, clothes, and canned food is nothing short of inspiring.
Cast Your Vote for ‘Scrooge of the Year’
It’s the holiday season and time once again to say “bah humbug” to the most cold-hearted and greedy CEOs, corporations and politicians who exemplify the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge.
This is the 10th year that Jobs with Justice (JwJ) has “honored” the person or group that has done the most to “scrooge” workers. And given the current crop of nominees—Bank of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hyatt Hotels, Publix Supermarkets and student loan providers—it looks like it will be a hard decision to pick just one.
You can cast your vote for any of these deserving nominees here. The winner will be announced Dec. 21.
First, there’s Bank of America, which had a hand in the worst of the subprime lending excesses, providing financing to four of the top five largest subprime lenders during the years prior to the crash. Among them, these four firms issued more than $320 billion in subprime loans from 2005-2007. As a result of these kinds of abuses, Bank of America helped crash the economy and then accepted bailouts and backstops totaling $199.2 billion.
Workers Rally to Shut Down School of Americas
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Hundreds of union members joined religious and human rights activists in a vigil and rally outside the gates of the School of the Americas (SOA) last weekend to demand that it be closed.
Graduates of the school, operated by the U.S. Department of Defense at Fort Benning, Ga., have been linked to human rights violations and suppression of popular movements in the Americas, according to the activist group SOA Watch.
Many targets of assassination and torture in Latin America are trade unionists. More union members are killed each year in Latin America than in the rest of the world combined, primarily due to extreme anti-worker violence in Colombia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation.
Union members, young activists and religious groups joined in a labor caucus Nov. 22 and heard Colombian trade union members describe the dangerous conditions they live under daily. When 14 Colombian unionists were in the United States receiving training through the AFL-CIO over the past two months, four of their union colleagues back home were killed.
Tomato Workers Score Huge Victory
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In a huge win for farm workers, one of the nation’s top food service and management companies reached an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve working conditions and give a raise directly to Florida’s tomato harvesters.
The pact between Compass Group North America and the CIW calls for the company to pay an additional 1.5 cents per pound for all the tomatoes it purchases each year, with 1 cent per pound passed directly from the supplier to the workers. The agreement boosts workers’ wages from 50 cents for a 32-pound bucket to 82 cents per bucket, a 64 percent increase.
This is the first agreement where the money goes directly to the workers. Previous agreements called for the money to go into an escrow account.
